Steve3007 wrote:...If you've studied this subject in the depth required to overturn it at a very high level, then you are already very, very well aware of all this to a much greater extent than I, who does not have such ambitions, right?---
Steve3007 wrote:OK. Fair enough. Which parts [of [physics] do you regard as the relevant ones?
David Cooper wrote:Any parts relevant to any phenomenon that I'm exploring. If there's an area I'm not sure about, I do the necessary research, and if all I can find are pages of mathematical squiggles with a lack of explanation in ordinary language to go with it, I can ask for help in interpreting them at a science forum, though that's rarely necessary.What "mathematical squiggles" are you referring to exactly? The mathematics of vector calculus? The Heaviside formulation of Maxwell's Equations? The tensor calculus used in General Relativity? Or just all algebra?
There is a hierarchy of required understanding in every subject, including physics. To simply learn a bit about the foundations of it, you study it to school level. To get a general, qualitative sense of the interesting concepts involved at higher levels than the foundations you perhaps read a popular account of the subject aimed at a lay-audience. To teach it, you study it to at least a level higher than the students you are teaching. I know from personal experience of having studied physics to degree level and taught it (and Maths and General Science) in high school, that to teach up to GCSE level you need at least 'A' level yourself. To teach to 'A' level you need at least first (bachelors) degree level. To teach undergraduates you need post-graduate experience. Finally, at the top of that hierarchy, way above the level of lowly former school teachers like myself, there is the depth of understanding required to confidently proclaim paradigm shifts in the subject - to be able to precisely demonstrate to other specialists in the subject where they've gone wrong, having understood precisely what those specialists have said.
With many, many comments here and elsewhere you have declared yourself to be at the top of that hierarchy. So when I ask you something like this:
Steve3007 wrote:In the above, by "those" and "they" I assume you mean Maxwell's Equations. Just to be clear about what you did when you "picked them apart": Which terms in Maxwell's equations are the distance terms? How were they measured by Faraday and other experimental physicists?or this:
Steve3007 wrote:Please could you describe how the fact that the wave solution of Maxwell's equations yields a value of 'c' for the electromagnetic waves described in those equations works in the context of Lorentz Ether Theory.I am eagerly expecting to learn something from someone who has much more depth of understanding and insight into the subject than I do (as a mere former-teacher with a, now, very rusty and old education in the subject). But, so far, nothing. You won't show me the depth of your knowledge. Instead, you appear to me to show muddle over, for example, what it means for a statement to be logically self-contradictory. You give a good impression of someone who isn't actually at the point in that hierarchy that they claim to be. That's why I keep asking questions to try to give you a chance to show that impression to be wrong.
David Cooper wrote:Maxwell's Equations are not a part of physics that I know enough about to use them, so I rely on other people showing me what they do with them. I've followed the trail in the past far enough to find distance terms which were being loaded with rest-frame values, ...That's like an English Literature research post-grad saying that they've heard of a guy called Shakespeare but never read him themselves (and regard Shakespearean language as a bunch of squiggles). You can't just pick the thin thread through the subject that you think is going to lead you as quickly as possible to the conclusion you want. That leads you very, very likely not to have fully understood the arguments of those you seek to overturn. As I've said, to build the roof you first need the foundations.
What do you mean "being loaded with rest-frame values"? Walk me though some of the early experiments in electricity and magnetism, which led ultimately to the various equations that were brought together by Maxwell (and simplified by Heaviside), and show me what you mean in that context.
...and I have every confidence that the same thing will always be the case in these situations. There is also the difficulty that if you do feed in measurements in based on other frames, the equations themselves may be too simple to be able to apply to them - you may need more complex versions to handle this, while Maxwell's versions are simpler because they rest on the luck of the fact that relativity always works as a shortcut. I've been led to believe that Poincaré woked on fixing this, but I've never seen the details. So, the way forward for this part of the argument depends on you showing me how you apply numbers to these equations to get a speed of light relative to the apparatus. If you can't do that without using distance terms, then it won't prove anything. You shouldn't expect it to prove anything though, because if it showed that the speed of light relative to an object is always c in all directions, it would prove that 1=2 and we'd have to throw out all our maths.(Bold added by me for emphasis.)
I can try to put some oil on my rusty knowledge and teach you some physics. But I shouldn't be doing that. You, as the paradigm-overturner, should be teaching me. The way forward is for you, the one with the extraordinary insight and the extraordinary claims, to be providing the extraordinary evidence to demonstrate those claims.
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After those general comments, just a little bit about the more specific things you've said for now:
Steve3007 wrote:But since nobody has said 2=1, you can't be talking literally.
David Cooper wrote:I'm talking absolutely literally...That is very surprising because if you are, then you are wrong. Prove me wrong in saying that by quoting the mathematical expression, used in an accepted law of physics, which amounts to "2=1".
...The rival claims of different frames can only be valid and equally valid if we throw out the rule that 2 cannot be equal to 1. The claims generated by different frames don't merely say that 2=1, but that every number is equal to every other number. That's what the contradictions tell you if you decide to tolerate them instead or rejecting them.Remember what I said earlier about language?
viewtopic.php?p=319102#p319102
If a statement in mathematical language does not contain an expression that is logically equivalent to "2=1" then, if you correctly render that statement into English, it still doesn't. Same as if the languages were French and English. If you think it does, then something has got lost in translation.
Your statements, about what reference frames "claim", are badly worded. And bad wording using imprecise definitions leads to mis-translation. As I've already said, reference frames don't claim anything. Observations/measurements are made by observers who use reference frames to quantify them. The results of those measurements are quantitative. They are represented mathematically. The rules of mathematical logic are applied in the form of an argument - that's where the application of reason comes in. This logic links different observations together in a pattern.
If observer A and B are both carrying clocks and observer A says "I count the ticks of B's clock coming more slowly than I count the ticks of mine" and if B says "I count the ticks of A's clock coming more slowly than I count the ticks of mine" there is no contradiction. Neither of them is wrong unless they've made a mistake in their observations. Nobody has said "2=1". If you think differently then you have to show me how, in terms of something that can be observed.
Describe to me an observation that shows one or both of them to have said something contradictory. It's when you do this that you start to have to think carefully about something like this famous "twin paradox".